Forum:Citations
A while ago, RSK left me a message on my talk page about standardizing citations with a template. I thought this was a great idea, so I created one and tested it in the wiki sandbox. I just created the actual template, Template:Citation, very recently. I tried it out on the Mobile Chick Flick page and found that it is much easier to just copy and paste the details from the Nitrome blog post into the template parameters than to type it all out. Plus, as RSK pointed out, it is much easier to modify the template than to modify every single citation the wiki. Anyway, you can look at the source code of the template (a very simple switch statement, essentially), and change it as you like. It is very easy to add different types of sources, as right now there are just blog posts, tweets, and video citations. Here is the syntax for the template in case you want to use it as well: Shortened syntax: So, shall we use this template officially on the wiki? -- 18:16, December 28, 2013 (UTC) It looks good. 18:30, December 28, 2013 (UTC) -- 19:05, December 28, 2013 (UTC) Would it be possible to add a section for the template so that you could write and bold where in the source you are citing? It could be like this (rearranged some stuff): Nitrome Blog: Chick Flick Mobile Update, 28 Dec 2013 → ...the level was a glitch. 28 Dec 2013 Or Nitrome blog: 28 Dec 2013 - Chick Flick Mobile Update → ...the level was a glitch. 28 Dec 2013 The reason I bring this up is because, some times it isn't possible to give a link to an exact text that goes all the way down to the place the text is located (Icebreaker updates page on Icebreaker site), or sometimes something you cite may consist of several paragraphs, and you are only citing one sentence. In both of these situations, the reader has to either search a lot, or read through a whole bunch of paragraphs. -- 19:23, December 28, 2013 (UTC) :I think the "accessed" date should be changed to "retrieved" - just to clarify that it's the date the link was accessed to retrieve the information, you follow? :An excerpt parameter might be helpful as well, but we'll have to make it optional. And try not to apply bold to too many words. Actually, applying bold may not be a good idea for emphasizing words at all; it's become overkill. 19:47, December 28, 2013 (UTC) ::Yes, excerpt parameter would definitely work well as being optional. I haven't used bold as much because what I have been citing doesn't require any bolding. -- 20:05, December 28, 2013 (UTC) :::What about italicizing? It's less of an eyesore. 21:28, December 28, 2013 (UTC) ::::But wouldn't it seem kind of strange to italicize something that you want the reader to obviously see? Considering how people are against bolding, should we use some other different colour for pointing stuff out (and no, I'm not being sarcastic)?-- 21:49, December 28, 2013 (UTC) ::::::I'm not against bold text; in fact, I think it's better than italicizing. What I'm saying is that in the past, there was a lot of bold text used in citations, and some users felt like they had to apply bold when quoting an excerpt when really, they didn't have to. We want to try and avoid using coloured text if possible, because it's not proper on content pages. 22:32, December 28, 2013 (UTC) (reset indent)The main reason I am against bold text in this case is because it might become confusing for the reader. If we had the template contain bold text, the source would look like: Nitrome Blog: Chick Flick Mobile Update, 28 Dec 2013 → ...but Mat thought the level was a glitch. 28 Dec 2013 I think one of either of these should be switched from bold and to another text. 23:12, December 28, 2013 (UTC) :The retrieved date shouldn't be in bold. The only things I would bold here are the Nitrome Blog text maybe. The excerpt should be put in quotations, maybe with an elipses at the end. The point is, well, to point out which part of the text or section of an article/video we are using as a source. Something that can be quickly searched up with Ctrl F or something. 23:15, December 28, 2013 (UTC) ::The retrieved data isn't in bold, only the words "Nitrome Blog" and the excerpt are? Maybe you were looking at my first publish that accidentally came out weird? So you also agree with having the excerpt as non-bold (because that is what I have been arguing)? I do like the idea of having ellipses at the beginning and end with quotations. 23:28, December 28, 2013 (UTC) :::Yes, I believe I went overboard with bolding previously. I don't really like using quotations, as it looks a bit odd, also, it seems redundant, as when you cite something, you are citing something someone else said, so there is no reason to use quotations (from what I see, but then, I may be wrong). However, quotations can be used if it is difficult to separate the quote from everything else, but then, we don't have a problem with that, do we? :::Ellipses are fine for me. however, I think we should only use them for fragments of a sentence, because if we use them for full sentences, it just looks weird and confusing (as if we chopped something out of the sentence). -- 00:56, December 29, 2013 (UTC) ::::I think putting ellipses was only meant for fragments of sentences when it was suggested, so at least we all agree on that. But I still support quotations because quotations are used when someone says something. It looks better when quoting people, so it should be the same with quoting sources (such as an excerpt from a blog post). 01:56, December 29, 2013 (UTC) :::::The reason I used "accessed" is because that is what I have seen on other wikis, as well as MLA format guidelines (i.e. date of access). I added the (optional) excerpt parameter. I ended up using italics for the excerpt. I think we should only use quotes when the source is an actual quote that someone said. Else, italics should work just fine. Here is an example of the new template: -- 03:05, December 29, 2013 (UTC) Returns: :::Looks all good to me, except why did it still come up with saying and even though you filled in those parameters? 18:56, December 30, 2013 (UTC) ::::The parameter names were changed, and the ones under the new names are not specified. 19:48, December 30, 2013 (UTC) :::::Yep. Here's an example for the updated template: -- 22:44, December 30, 2013 (UTC) Returns: :Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Wikipedia and their citation template, which does use "accessdate" as a parameter, but it returns "Retrieved". An example of this can be found on pretty much any major Wikipedia article with references/bibliography, but I'll link a page just in case: Cave Story. :Regardless, the citation template still doesn't follow the MLA style, which puts the author first, followed by the article name and then the site title. Right now, our order seems to be site title, article. Of course we could change this around, no problem. But I would prefer using Wikipedia's style of "Retrieved" because it's more specific (and the wiki doesn't have to be hardcore MLA, because it isn't even following MLA guidelines with this template), and I would also change the date parameter to "publisheddate" and "accessed" to "accessdate". If we have just "date", it might be confusing in the future. The whole "Retrieved" vs. "Accessed" doesn't have to be resolved immediately since the parameters should still remain the same either way. 08:20, December 29, 2013 (UTC) :Oh, and italics should be fine for excerpts, but they don't need to be used for short blog posts and the like. They're more for larger articles where the information retrieved may be more difficult to spot immediately so providing a short quote may be a nudge in the right direction. Would this excerpt parameter also account for the time duration a reader might need to jump to if using a video reference? 08:23, December 29, 2013 (UTC) ::Right, I see your point. I wasn't exactly trying to follow MLA format, just the general guidelines. For videos, can't the time duration be provided in the link? If not, then it is certainly possible to place the time in the excerpt section. Anyway, I changed the template to the have the parameters you suggested (publisheddate and retrieveddate to be consistent with the wording, although I could change it to accesseddate), and changed the wording to "retrieved". -- 17:28, December 29, 2013 (UTC) :::Sounds good to me. One more thing though: the template should account for Wayback Machine archives of web pages, which are sometimes more helpful than their current page. I can't find it, but I once used a Wayback archive of Simon Hunter's website because a citation used a front page announcement, which is bound to change in the future. (It is not archived the way blog posts are.) I noticed that Wikipedia has a Wayback Machine template, and for Wayback Machine citations, it just uses the format "name on the Wayback Machine" - no timestamps or anything. Should we do it simple like this or put said access and archive dates on them? 19:45, December 30, 2013 (UTC) ::::I reckon using the published and retrieved date parameters for Wayback sources would be certainly helpful, especially with websites with tons of archives. Is there any reason not to? (Also, I added the archive option for the type parameter. For an example, see Nitrome Wiki:Sandbox.) -- 22:44, December 30, 2013 (UTC) :::::The reason the retrieved dates are recorded is because of the nature of links and webpages in general: they stop working over the years to come, or move to a new URL. When these links "die", their older revisions may still be retained in an archiving website like Wayback. If we know the retrieved dates, we can use Wayback to search for a date around when the information was retrieved to find an almost, if not exact copy of the source, which is still archived. :::::Would this really apply to looking up a Wayback Machine archive? I don't think, in the sense that the other sources, such as blog articles, always display the current revision and change over time. Wayback Machine's webpage archives are the archives, and as so do not change. A retrieved date is somewhat useless in this sense. Even if Wayback was to shut down, knowing when the archive from Wayback was retrieved would not be of much use attempting to find the same information on another archiving website. I think this is why Wikipedia's Wayback Machine template isn't as formal as their citation template, but I'm just taking a guess here. 01:17, January 2, 2014 (UTC) :::::I did my share of messing around with this template :D. It seems as though the template restricts itself to self published sources only. For the most part, this is okay, but some sources can also be obtained by use of interviews with Nitrome. These aren't "published" by Nitrome, but can still be considered valid sources. How should these be incorporated into the template? :::::I noticed you applied the bold formatting and colon to each individual parameter rather than the entire parameter itself, so I made that change; however, it wouldn't account for a default parameter, which I think should just be } to account for sources like interviews, where } would be the name of the site that interviews Nitrome. You could remove this formatting if that was your intention... :::::I also made } a default parameter, since web sources don't always show the published date on the page. It hasn't happened before, but that doesn't mean it won't ever. 01:36, January 2, 2014 (UTC) ::::::I suppose a retrieved date would be kind of useless for archives of a site, even though the archiving site itself can be changed... Woah, archive-ception! Who archives the archives? Alright, if the majority agrees that the retrieved date is unnecessary for these types of sources, then I'm fine with it. I personally would place the retrieved date, just to be safe. ::::::Aren't interviews (at least, if they're on the Internet) published sources? Can't we cite the website that the interview was placed on? If so, we might need to add a general "website" type. Would that work? -- 03:13, January 2, 2014 (UTC) They are published sources, but they are not self published sources. Nitrome doesn't interview themselves and then publish it on their own, right? You must have misunderstood what I said, because I was suggesting a blank } parameter to show by default. The name of the site interview takes place on could be there in bold, but not linked (since a URL to the interview taking place on the same site would be posted already). I don't see how adding a retrieved date for a Wayback Machine archive plays it safe, but if you want an opinion, I think making a separate template called will do; using Wayback Machine's web page archives are different from using "archived" sources like blog posts. The Wayback Machine citing would go something like: "of web page linked (Date of archive) on the Wayback Machine". 07:06, January 2, 2014 (UTC) :Ok, I see what you mean with the default type parameter. Feel free to make the appropriate revisions to the template. I'm not sure if a separate Wayback template is necessary, though, as we can just add an if statement in the Citation template. -- 15:33, January 2, 2014 (UTC) ::I'm not sure how an if statement would work integrating archives as citations within the template. The format is completely different from a regular citation, and requires completely different parameters. Something like: ::to produce something like Name of page on the Wayback Machine (archived Date archived). ::I don't really know what you had in mind, though. I personally think it would be a lot better if the two were separate templates, since Wayback Machine archives use a different format altogether. You *could* specify Wayback as the |type= within Template:Citation, but you currently don't have the link, title, excerpt and date parameters within the #switch function. Plus, if you have to integrate a bunch of parser functions to get the citation template to handle Wayback archives in this format, editing this template to change the citation format if need be might be difficult to do without breaking it. 06:58, January 4, 2014 (UTC) ::Oh, and I also made Template:Cite a redirect as a quicker shortcut (and Wikipedia format) to using the template. 07:00, January 4, 2014 (UTC) :::This is what I had in mind: :::Except I guess the retrieveddate paramter would be made optional. Anyway, your idea sounds good too. -- 17:59, January 4, 2014 (UTC) ::::I would like the retrieveddate parameter to be not optional for said sources that aren't archives. This would be in conflict with archives, where there's no reason to provide a retrieved date. We also want to make it clear in this case that the date refers to the date archived, not Wayback's date of publishing the archive necessarily. ::::Changes - Added "Nitrome on" to Twitter and YouTube, and changed "Nitrome blog" to "Game Developer's Blog - Nitrome" to match the given page title. This is for clarification purposes, although I don't know if we plan on using Nitrome staff YouTube/Twitter sources... 19:47, January 4, 2014 (UTC) :::::Okay, go ahead and create the Wayback template then. Good changes, I made some to accompany those. Added a name parameter for accounts that are not Nitrome's (as we will almost certainly use non-Nitrome social media sources), as well as a Facebook type. -- 03:56, January 5, 2014 (UTC) ::::::I created the Wayback template. Next in order would be to create a policy page/manual of style for the formatting of citations. I'm still writing policy pages for images and videos though. 05:34, January 19, 2014 (UTC) (reset indent) I would be glad to make the manual of style for citations if possible. How would I go about doing so? -- 18:17, January 19, 2014 (UTC) :Try making a draft first on a user subpage, then link to it in Project talk:Manual of Style (red link because no one's used it yet). 18:23, January 19, 2014 (UTC) ::Okay, thanks. -- 17:50, January 20, 2014 (UTC)